Saturday, April 5, 2025 @ 8:00 pm / VBI Theatre – 12 Vassar Street / Ticket Prices: $10-20 sliding scale admission / Ticket Information: Elysium Furnace Works

Two dynamic duos descend upon an unsuspecting Poughkeepsie when the improvised guitar duo of James Keepnews and Billy Stein is joined by drummer/percussionist Dean Sharp and Nico Soffiato performing an opening set.

James Keepnews and Billy Stein

Dean Sharp and Nico Soffiato

James Keepnews is a musician, writer and multimedia artist. He received a degree in English from Hamilton College and an MFA from the iEAR program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As a musician and composer, he has performed and/or recorded with such artists as Joe McPhee, George Lewis, William Parker, Karl Berger, Daniel Carter, Charles Gayle, Kidd Jordan, Roy Campbell, Tony Malaby, Hamid Drake, Jason Kao Hwang’s Spontaneous River, Ras Moshe, Matt Lavelle, Holland Hopson, The New York Chapter of Crafty Guitarists, Chapter Two, The New York Guitar Project, Blown Woofer, Brown Cuts Neighbors and Lick the President. He has developed and performed with improvised computer-interactive audio and video systems at The Kitchen, Bard College, The Stone and many other venues. He is a co-founder and curator for the Hudson Valley experimental arts series Elysium Furnace Works and is a past co-director of the Red Hook Jazz Festival in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in Chronogram, Pacific Life Magazine, New Haven Advocate, Bass Guitar, Fairfield Weekly, Metroland, Story Screen, The Squid’s Ear and Reign of Toads. He lives in Hyde Park, NY.

Billy Stein is a guitarist born in Brooklyn, New York. While attending Hunter College, where he would earn a BA in Music Composition & Theory, he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study classical guitar with Leonid Bolotine. Billy then became involved in multiple music scenes in and around NYC including R&B, funk, blues, rock, salsa, as well as both mainsteam and free- jazz. Over the years he has performed and recorded with an eclectic group of musicians including Milt Hinton, Sahib Shihab, Joe Blanco, The Coasters, Rashid Bakr, and many other artists. Recordings as a leader include “HYBRIDS” THE BILLY STEIN TRIO, 2006 (Barking Hoop) and “INTERVALS”, (with Michael Moss), 2013 (4th Stream Records). Current projects include collaborations with Joe Giardullo.

Nico Soffiato, guitar, and Dean Sharp, drums, have been playing together for the last couple of years and are working on a record together. Their music has deep roots in jazz, rock, and improvised music. Their spontaneous compositions are fueled by driving rhythms and particular attention is paid to sound design and strong melodic statements.

Nico Soffiato is an Italian guitarist, composer and educator. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2007, he made his home in Brooklyn and moved to the Hudson Valley in 2021. A versatile player, Nico finds himself playing in various jazz and experimental groups such as his duo with Grammy-winning trumpet player Josh Deutsch, Paradigm Refrain with Anti Label recording artist Marco Buccelli, and Dogwood. As a member of the New York music scene for over fifteen years, Nico has been part of the collective Out Of your Head Brooklyn, whose members included Gerald Cleaver, Michael Attias, Tony Malaby, Kirk Knuffke, and many others. He also plays in Innocent When You Dream, Aaron Schragge’s ensemble that reimagines the music of Tom Waits. He had played nationally and internationally, presenting his music at renowned festivals like Dave Douglas’s FONT Festival, Sile Jazz Festival, Padova Jazz Festival and more. Nico is also music for media composer and producer. He’s a staff composer for the international music house Overcoast and has worked on movies and commercials.  

Dean Sharp is a prolific creative percussionist, composer, producer and remixer. He has played and/or recorded with a strikingly diverse array of creative artists including Moby, Brad Mehldau, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Elliott Sharp, Michael Bisio, Joe Lovano, Marc Ribot, John Stubblefield, Jazz Criminals, Hugh Brodie, Tony Levin, Steve Swallow, Carter Burwell, Todd Sickafoose’s Blood Orange , Kris Davis, and Ani Defranco. Sharp has written and recorded with notorious loop-miester David Torn (SPLaTTeRCeLL project), co-lead the ensembles earmight (w/ Dean Jones, David Hofstra, Russ Johnson and Ken Mcgloin) and trio loCo (w/ Marc Dzuiba and StudioStu) and is the creative catalyst behind SONic 150 (with bassist michael bisio and trumpet notebender russ johnson), scribbleScrabbLe (with videographer Thomas Moore), sharpEND (with Ken Mcgloin and John Menegan) and Word Was (w/ russ johnson and mario pavone). He has played a vital role in the recordings and live performances of such innovative singer/ songwriters as Rachael Sage, Greg Brown, Donna Lewis, MIMI, Noe Veneble, Louise Taylor, Jill Sobule and Jane Siberry.